Thursday, July 31, 2014

A Missed Opportunity

If you’re looking to professional
sports to provide justice for the wrongs you think need to be righted, find a
different hobby.Professional sports doesn’t
exist to bring you anything more meaningful than the highs and lows that
accompany victory and defeat.That said,
it still provides an enormous capacity to fail you when you need it most.

The latest but certainly not
the last case in point was NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s rather lightweight
two game suspension handed down to Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for
domestic violence against his fiancée, now wife, Janay Palmer.

Rice and Palmer were in an Atlantic
City casino for fun and games when a domestic dispute turned horribly
violent.According to reports, both Rice
and Palmer struck each other.But you
don’t need to speculate who came out of that fight unscathed, at least
physically.The video tape is crystal
clear.Rice was forcibly dragging a limp
Palmer by her hair out of an elevator following whatever took place behind
those metal doors.

Physical violence against
women is nothing new among NFL players.The
San Diego Union-Tribune maintains a database of all NFL players arrested since
2000.You could review it if you have
the time but suffice it to say that nearly every team in the league has had a
player charged with domestic violence since 2000.And that’s just the recent history.Cleveland Browns’ fans with a memory can
recall the number of run ins Jim Brown had with domestic violence during and
after his career (with all charges either eventually dropped or resulting in
his acquittal).What set the Rice
situation apart in the public conscious was the videotape.It’s one thing to read about a player
dragging an obviously injured woman around but a whole other matter to actually
see the horror on continuous loop.

The incident gave Goodell and
the NFL a chance to do two things.First, he could take the most public stand possible against the NFL’s
unfortunate history with domestic violence.Second, he could send a message to all of the other players that
violence against women in any form is now a zero tolerance offense that will
threaten your livelihood.And in some
fashion Goodell did both by even bothering to punish Rice at all.But what Goodell also did was place the
penalty on a spectrum that’s hard to fathom—less than smoking marijuana, slightly
more than wearing non-league approved cleats.When Goodell had the power to do all he could he opted instead to do the
least he could and keep a straight face.

There are plenty that would
argue that Rice should have been suspended for a year.There are plenty of others that would argue
that a player smoking marijuana merits a 4-game suspension so at the very
least, the very least, a player channeling his inner caveman dragging around
his property by the arm ought to suffer the same consequence.

I’m not sure exactly what the
right penalty should have been.What I
am sure about is that this penalty doesn’t feel right.A two-game penalty tells you that the NFL sees
other offenses as far more serious than those involving its players hitting
women.Just ask the New Orleans Saints
players accused of participating in a bounty system against other players in
the league.But more to the point, it also
offers absolutely no deterrent to the next offender.A season long suspension clearly would.A half year suspension just might.And in the end, isn’t that at least part of
the purpose of issuing a penalty?Shouldn’t
the impact it will have on deterring similar conduct be taken into account?

Let’s go back to the
aforementioned New Orleans Saints bountygate as a proxy.It wasn’t domestic violence but had similar
attributes in that involved NFL players and coaches sanctioning or
participating in specific conduct meant to injure another.Goodell leveled significant penalties,
suspending head coach Sean Payton for a year, indefinitely suspending another
coach and issuing minimum 6 game penalties to others.Goodell also suspended one player, Jonathan Vilma,
for a year.Three other players were
suspended for a range of between 3 and 8 games.In every case players and coaches suffered more significant penalties
than Goodell issued against Rice.(It’s
worth noting that the sanctions against the players were overturned by Paul
Tagliabue, who was hired as an arbitrator.Tagliabue found that they engaged in the conduct but placed the blame on
the coaches for incentivizing them to do so.)

My guess is that Goodell sees
the distinction between the bountygate situation and Rice’s as a matter of one
threatening the integrity of the game and the other a singularly personal
matter.But can that dichotomy alone
explain the massive difference in Goodell’s thinking, especially when once a
penalty is issued the outcome of a game, in this case a future game, is
potentially altered?

If Goodell really is parsing
these situations that closely then he is losing sight of the reason he’s taken
such a strong stand on personal conduct issues in the past.Maybe Goodell felt chastened when Tagliabue
overturned the penalties on the bountygate players, but that’s hardly a
reasonable excuse.

Nothing gets done in a vacuum
and I suspect Goodell levied a penalty that he knew Rice would not appeal
without looking like an even bigger idiot.I’m sure, too, that Goodell had to balance the inevitable outcry from
the union had he levied a penalty with real sting.Goodell, as commissioner, is as much a
politician as an executive.

But not every incident calls
for a political solution.Sometimes a
line has to get drawn and let the consequences flow from that.The players’ union is like the NRA.There is no penalties on its members that
they’d ever agree to on the record.Besides, their interests are not at all aligned with Goodell’s.He has to protect the integrity of the game
and all that it stands for.The union,
particularly this union under the misguided leadership of DeMaurice Smith,
cares not a whit about the good of the game, only the good of the dues paying
members.Given that, Goodell’s thought
process should have been first and only to do the right thing.Instead he looked to do what was expedient,
what would make his life easier.

It would be interesting to
understand Goodell’s actual thinking but he’s taken the coward’s approach and
gone radio silence, allowing the furor to dissipate.It hasn’t yet.At some point, maybe at a press conference
during Hall of Fame week or some other low key moment down the road he’ll
elaborate, but I doubt it will be much.He’ll say that the league took a stance by bothering to punish Rice at
all and then dangle out there that reasonable people can debate the severity of
the punishment.All true, technically.Practically, it’s a load of crap.

There’s just no sugarcoating
the magnitude of Goodell’s misstep here.His supplicants in the media, like Peter King, will dribble out tidbits
to suggest that Goodell tried to do the right thing by, for example, talking to
the victim, getting her input, making sure her voice mattered.But in even making that gesture, Goodell
conducted that meeting with Rice sitting right next to her, the dominator and
the dominated.What exactly did Goodell
think Palmer was going to say in that meeting?

The culture of this country
in these matters still tilts wildly in favor of the perpetrator.Rice was applauded when he walked onto the
Ravens practice field the other day as if he’s some kind of hero to be honored
for what exactly, not killing Palmer?Notably,
in his press conference on Thursday, Rice was appropriately contrite and
apologetic.It would have been more
noble to have chastised the idiot Ravens fans that gave him the applause in the
first place.

Victims of domestic violence,
like victims of sexual assault and victims of sexual harrassment, on the other
hand, face questions about their character and motivations, fair questions in
the context of due process but certainly not the only or even the main
questions to ask.And they’re also often
put in the awkward position of feeling responsible for the ultimate punishment
levied.That’s a lot to bear.

Had Palmer, for example, been
allowed to speak freely and confidentially, neither of which occurred here, she
might have had a different story to tell.We’ll never know but it isn’t a stretch to suggest that Goodell, a
lawyer by trade, knew exactly what he was doing by interviewing Palmer with
Rice present.As it is, though, because
Goodell and King and others dribbled out the information about her role in
Goodell’s deliberations, a harsher penalty on Rice would inevitably brought a
harsher scrutiny on her from all those Ravens fans who can’t stomach the
thought of being without Rice for an extended period of time.

There is a war on women in
this country and it shows no signs of abating.Goodell just contributed to the fray when he had a real chance, using
this country’s most popular sport and his position in it as the ultimate bully
pulpit, to emphatically declare that there is absolutely no place for domestic
violence.Goodell had an obligation to
think globally and instead deliberately thought small and in doing so called
into question his ongoing ability to lead the sport.

The
fight for women’s rights will go on as it always done, by fits and starts.The inroads women have made in the last 25
years or so are impressive but for all the gains made it just takes an incident
like this and the shocking outcome to remind us all that until we take care of
everyone on the same footing we don’t really take care of our own.